Pitstop Ploughshares Acquitted After Disabling U.S. Navy Plane

The “Pitstop Ploughshares” — a
group of five peace activists from the Catholic Worker movement who broke into
Shannon airport in Ireland and disabled a
U.S. Navy supply
plane with hammers and a pickaxe the month before the
invasion of Iraq began — have been found not
guilty by a Dublin jury. This follows
two mistrials.

One of the defense attorneys challenged the jurors, in closing arguments:

If a child’s plastic ball rolled into the street and the child ran after it,
would you leave it to the Garda to go after the child?

Or if a child’s beach ball went into the water, and the child went into the
water and risked drowning, would you leave it to the life guards?

If a child has both knees cut, would you leave it to the parents to bring the
child to the Out Patient’s?

If a woman’s handbag is snatched, would you help her or just leave it to the
Garda?

If it happened on a bus, would you intervene or leave it to the bus driver?

What would drive you to action?

The Traprock Peace Center has put
an mp3 on-line
of a talk on “Economic Disarmament” given by Juanita Nelson in
October, 2003. Some excerpts:

“One individual, living by firmly-held beliefs, can begin to change the world
in a small but significant way.” And I really think that’s all we can do.…

And so we must look to changing ourselves. I always cringe when I hear “Oh,
Bush is doing so-and-so.” Bush didn’t make all the bombs. He couldn’t just
put those bombs on his back and swim over to Iraq, you know. We are enabling
that. At least that’s the take I have on it.

And we’re the only ones we can really control. We can’t always do that very
well, but anyway we can try to do that for ourselves.…

I have this idea that if George Bush and Company would bring about peace as
we want them to do (I don’t think they’re omnipotent; I’m not sure they can
do it by themselves anyway), I think there would be a real revolution in this
country — and maybe some of us would join it! — because we wouldn’t be able
to have everything that we have now. No way, in a peaceful world.

So my idea is: why don’t we give it up now, before we kill some more people
and we get killed?

Plus the fact that I think that example is the best way, and that if we did
something really good, maybe George would see the light and follow our
example. If we really did something besides talk about
peace, and how much we love peace.…

War tax resistance, of course, that’s very economic — don’t buy what you
don’t want. I have this friend who’s made a sign — she goes to peace parades
but she stands with that and says “don’t buy this war” — “I Haven’t Bought a
Bomb Since 1971.” And I’m going to revise it and
say I haven’t bought a bomb since 1948.…

Certainly, being the biggest bully on the block entitles the United States to
a lot of swag and deference. But it’s also a very expensive hobby. Nelson
& Floyd assume that if the United States pursued a path of peace and
justice instead of domination, its selfish citizens would rebel at the loss of
loot and privileges.

I’m not convinced this is the case. It seems to me that the
return-on-investment for the truly vast sums American taxpayers spend on its
military is probably very poor (except, of course, for the politicians and
military contractors themselves). I would not be at all suprised to find the
United States, and its citizens, prospering and thriving without the
(expensive) ability and inclination to pull off shock-and-awe smash-and-grabs.

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